Why You Shouldn’t Try To Get Closure From A Narcissist

If you feel a strong urge to explain yourself to a narcissist or finally have the conversation that fixes everything, this episode will help you understand why that pull exists — and why it rarely brings relief.

Many people healing from narcissistic abuse or codependency believe the relationship could change if they could communicate clearly enough… calmly enough… lovingly enough.

But the need to be understood is often not about communication.

It is about emotional survival wiring.

When connection once depended on managing another person’s reactions, the brain learned to negotiate for safety.
So even after awareness, part of you still believes the right words will end the confusion.

In reality, explaining yourself often strengthens the trauma bond instead of resolving it.

Transcript

Welcome to Breakdown to Breakthrough, The podcast that empowers you to transform your life by awakening to your true authentic self. I'm Lisa A. Romano, Your host. As an award-winning author and certified life coach, I've dedicated my life to helping others understand the incredible power of an organized mind. I believe that true empowerment begins with awakening to our false self. My mission is to support you on your journey toward mental and emotional regeneration through conscious and deliberate awakening. In this podcast, I'll share insights, Tools, And transformative stories that illuminate the path to healing and self-discovery. So today we're going to go over some key ideas that you might be able to use. Hopefully you'll find them useful in your life that have to do with when you should speak to someone who you think is highly narcissistic or who has a high conflict personality and when you shouldn't. And what sparked this session was someone reached out to me on social media and was kind of confused by a recent post that I offered that was titled, The Shuttie Shuttie Club. And just a little backstory. So I'm always trying to come up with ways that empower people who have either been born into unhealthy dynamics, Who were raised by people who were emotionally immature. And let's face it, If you're emotionally immature, You're self-centered, You take everything personal. Personally, You have very thin skin, You distrust people. It's really kind of hard to be around somebody who is emotionally immature. No matter how hard you try to like bring the conversation up, Someone who is highly emotionally immature is going to bring the conversation down. Really tough to be around this person long-term. And if you were born to this type of a person, Then you're going to be in pain because you grew up feeling unseen. You were probably gaslit. You were probably made fun of and they thought it was funny. If you were raised by narcissistic parents who were covert and the outside world could see, Wow, Something's really wrong in that relationship. The mom is really mean to her or the dad is really mean to his son. It's really obvious that there's narcissism playing out in the family. And or if you were raised by people who were addicted in some way, Then you grew up like feeling unseen, Unheard, Life was unpredictable. You walked on eggshells. Really difficult to navigate that as a child and you have no one there for you. There's no one to support you or to say to you, Listen, Dear one, This is not you. This is this sick system. And then what ends up happening is that we absorb the sick system. We become programmed by this sick system. And so because we feel unseen and we feel unheard, We are now hypervigilant, Escaping our inner reality. We have to dissociate. We have to leave our inner reality. We can't ask ourselves, How do we feel? What do we think? What do we need? We have to remain hypervigilant and pay attention to what's happening outside of us. We're looking for cues for how to avoid rejection, How to avoid abandonment or worse, Or for cues as to how to hold on to the shreds of attachments that we do have. And so shutty shutty is a term that I came up with when I was going through my separation and divorce at the time. My ex-husband was not doing well, Nor was I, But I was trying to keep it together for my kids and for the sake of being able to support myself after leaving this relationship and making a go with it. And I was receiving, I don't know, 20 or 30 texts a day, No exaggeration, Leaving voicemails on my answering machine at home. And I was at work one day and I heard my phone going off and I opened up the locker and I it was a flip phone at the time and I opened it up and I just saw all these texts coming through. And I was like, Nope, Shutty shutty. I shut the phone. And I so much wanted to engage. I so much wanted to fire back. I so much wanted to give him a piece of my mind, Like, Leave me alone. I'm trying the best that I can to take care of our children, Our children through all of this muck and through all of this mire, Just leave me alone. I'm working three jobs and working seven days a week. Just leave me alone. I really wanted to engage, But I didn't. And trust me when I tell you, And you probably many of you have felt this, Like when someone's coming at you and they're looking for a reaction from you, It is so hard to not engage. And it felt like withdrawal. It felt like I was giving up myself and he was getting away with something. It felt like injustice in the beginning. And after many years, I now understand that was my small self. That was my ego wanting to battle him back. You hurt me. Now I'm going to hurt you. That was that part of it. And I felt stronger in being able to defend myself and speak up because I was now in my own home. I was now in my own job. I had started another business. I was a personal trainer and I was doing very well at the time, Eventually started doing very well. But I was starting to feel like, You know, I can push you back now. I don't live with you. I'm not afraid of you anymore. But I still went shutty shutty. Now, I recently put out a post and I saw that there was a person on the post who was really struggling with, Wait a minute, You mean I'm not supposed to go back at this narcissistic person in my life? I feel empowered when I do. And she wrote back and she said, Oh, That's interesting that you're saying that empowerment is in shutty shutty. It's in saying nothing or very little. And I wanted to flesh this out with everybody because I think she brought up a really good point that we can all benefit from. So here are some guidelines that you can use when you're thinking, Do I say something? Do I don't say anything like what's the healthiest? And I do refrain from saying, Is this a good thing or a bad thing? It's black and white thinking. So what helps me make decisions in a pinch, Especially as recovering codependent who has a long history of like not knowing what I feel because I've had to ignore what I feel because of the way that I was raised, But I know how I feel these days, You're one, But that's my history. That's my background. I now know how I feel, But what helps me in a pinch these days, And even when I was first on the recovery journey was instead of asking if this is a good thing or a bad thing or the right thing or the wrong thing, Start asking yourself, What is the healthiest thing for me to do? That kind of like clears the playing field of confusion. What's the healthiest thing for me to do right now? It is, Is it the healthiest for me to keep engaging? Is it the healthiest for me to push back right now? What's the healthiest thing for me to do right now? And then another question that you ask, You can ask yourself is where do I see this relationship going? Do I want to continue this relationship? Do I want to continue the quality of this relationship, The intensity of the relationship? Because by all means, If that's what you want in your daily life, If that's how you want to spend your energy, If that's how you want to spend your thoughts, By all means, Engage. Shuttie Shuttie was created as a way to help people understand that their power really is in holding onto their energy and holding onto themselves and not giving the narcissist anything. And maybe this person isn't a narcissist. They don't have a pervasive pattern of entitlement and emotional exploitation and a lack of empathy. Maybe this is somebody who you find emotionally manipulative, Who likes to get a rise out of you. It still applies. Like how long do I want to engage with this person? Like how long do I want this relationship to be keep going? How long do I want this intensity in my life and what is the healthiest thing for me to do right now? What's the healthiest action? Because that removes right or wrong and that is just so helpful in and of itself. Now what and how I answered this woman was this, I said, Look, I said, It all depends on why you're engaging back. If you have like a narcissistic brother in your life who likes to dig you, He likes giving you backhanded compliments. He likes being passive aggressive. He likes stirring the pot. He likes lighting the family up with gossip about you. Like, You know, This, When you are in a conversation with, With him, You know that he loves to throw out a Molotov cocktail. He loves to see you react. You know, That what you want to understand is that your reaction to them is what they're looking for. And so if you're engaging with that person, Because on some level you think that you're going to win and engaging with them makes you feel powerful. I want you to understand that that only keeps this relationship in flow. It keeps it going because the narcissist needs to know that they've gotten a rise out of you. You know, Like narcissists don't play with dead mice. They're not getting a rise out of them, But a narcissist might very much enjoy chasing a mouse, Like making the mouse afraid. But the minute the mouse dies, The game's over. And so before you engage with someone who you feel is highly narcissistic, You want to ask yourself the questions that I just presented. And you also want to think about this idea as to why am I engaging with this person? I think we all, Or many of us, I don't want to say all because maybe there aren't, But I think lots of us who are learning to disengage from people who tend to be very upsetting to us, They activate our nervous system in a very negative way. People who we know that are going to antagonize us for no reason, People who we know that we can't go to them and like have them celebrate with us. Like you just instinctively know, I'm not going to share that with them. Like you know that. And there's a reason you know that. And there's a reason that you can't share yourself with this person. And more than likely it's because this person has had such a negative impact on you that you already know, They've already impressed your subconscious mind with, Don't tell them the good stuff. Like don't tell them the good stuff. They can't handle it. They're envious. They're going to say something negative about what you have succeeded at. They're going to compare you to someone else. Just don't do it. You have enough data that's been impressed to know. And so when you have these people in your life, You really have to take a giant step back. You need to do an inventory. And I'm not somebody who says, Oh, Go no contact and just isolate. That's sometimes you have to. But in a large majority of the cases, When you gain discernment, When you are looking more inside yourself than outside of yourself, When you are actually taking the time to come out of reactive mode, And you're thinking about the people in your life that you spent a lot of time ruminating about, Codependents are famous because we're in so much pain. We don't know it. We're famous for ruminating. What do they think about me? Why did I say that? What's going to happen next? I hope they're not mad at me. What should I have said? I can't believe I said that. We are famous for wondering about what people think, What people feel, What people wonder about us, What they expect about us. And we stay in this loop of anticipatory anxiety, Like what's going to happen next. And at the same time, We're trying to imagine what we can change in the future. So to control this outcome. So we're never in the now. And we tend to be reacting to what's happening inside of us. Now, Before you know that you're codependent, You don't know that you're codependent. You don't know that you're in reactive mode. You don't know that below the veil of consciousness, You are assuming that you have to meet the needs of everybody around you. You don't know that, But you're doing that. But you don't know you're doing that because it's so normal. Before you recognize yourself as somebody who is a people pleaser or who has a hard time saying no, And then resents people. Before you realize that your relationships are just so unhealthy, Like no matter what relationship you're in, They tend to be very unfulfilling. There's always something wrong. Before you actually look at that objectively, Which would be the process of metacognition, The ability to think about the way that you think, To observe yourself, You don't know that you're doing anything wrong. So it feels so natural for someone who is codependent to react. Your husband says this, You react. Sometimes you shrink, Sometimes you shout, But there's always a reaction. There's never a pause. Wait a minute. What's happening here? Do I have to engage with this person? Maybe I can just go, Okay, Thanks for the information. And I can go brush my teeth. Maybe I don't have to react right now. This is what we need to do as those of us who are healing from codependency. We have to find the pause button. And the pause button allows me to stop engaging in conversations and in experiences and in relationships with people who are designed to not hear me. When you are engaging with someone who is highly narcissistic, You have to understand that this person is not designed for resolution. They're designed for inflammation. They're designed for aggravation. They're designed for conflict. Once conflicts in relationships end, Which starts with us, If you are the codependent in the relationship, The conflict has to end inside of you. You have to get to a point where you say, My peace of mind is just way more important than trying to get this person to understand me. You're going to go round and round and round with someone who's highly narcissistic. They're never going to give it to you. Never. Let's say you're getting a divorce and you have two cars, For example. That'd be nice. Right? But let's say you have two cars. If you let the narcissist know, I want the red car, The narcissist is going to want the red car. Not because they want the red car, They might want the black car, But because you want the red car, Narcissist wants the red car. So what you want to do with the narcissist, You have to trick them. So if you want the red car, You have to say, I want the black car. Now the narcissist wants whatever you want. The narcissist doesn't want you to get what you want. That's the game they play. So that's just another tidbit, But that's, That's the way you have to deal with someone who's highly narcissistic. But let's back up a little bit. What and how is that thought process born? That thought process is born through non-reactivity. It's, It's born out of being strategic. And so we have to learn to be a little bit more strategic. We have to be far less reactive when it comes to people who are highly narcissistic because they're relying on that immediate feedback. They want you to be triggered and open your mouth. And the more information you give a narcissist, The better, Right? So you want to get through the divorce and you, You want this, I want the kids on this holiday and I want the kids for that time zone or whatever it is at that time period. I want them to go to this school. I want that. Forget it. You just tell the narcissist everything that you want. You're certainly not going to get it or they're going to do everything they can to get what you want just because you want it. But when you take a step back and you learn about how someone who is highly narcissistic operates, Then your mind can say, Wait a minute, There's more benefit in me pausing than reacting. And that is how you get your brain to work for you because everyone's brain works through pain versus pleasure through the default mode network below the veil of consciousness. And so if my brain now associates pleasure or motivation with not engaging, It is so much easier to shutty shutty. It is so much easier to go, Hmm, Okay, Got it. And walk away. But without the pause, Without really thinking about the consequences of engaging with a narcissist, More than likely you're going to stay on the hook and they are going to trigger you and they're going to keep coming at you. And what they're looking for is your energy. And if you're not street strategic enough about it and you really don't understand it like in your heart, I have to understand that the whole purpose of this person in my life right now is to get me to answer that text. It's to get me to respond to the negative comment. It's to get me to overexplain. It's to trigger me into feeling the need to be understood. Codependents have a strong need to be understood and that will get exploited, Exploited when you're moving about your day and you bump into people or you know that there's someone in your family and your aunt who's highly narcissistic, Butts her nose into everything that that has nothing to do with her. And she sends you some awful random text. Like you know that the worst thing I can do right now is to respond immediately. You at least a little bit mildly understand that reacting is not the answer, That holding back is going to be very strategic for you. And so when someone comes at you who's highly narcissistic and they're looking to get a reaction from you, The more you accept, Wait a minute, It is my react reaction to their action that I have to learn to navigate. I have to learn to manage that. Now going back to this lovely woman who responded to one of my social media posts, There is great power in silence. Silence says it's okay if you disagree with me. Silence says I accept your faulty perception of me. Silence says it's okay that you'll misunderstand me. Silence says I give you permission to be angry at me because I don't agree with you. Silence says you live in that box. I live in this box and I'm not responsible for the energy in your box. Um, Silence, Silence also says that, Listen, You're absolutely entitled to whatever emotions that you have, And I'm not responsible for fixing them or molding them so that they make me more comfortable and, And I don't have to spend 12 hours trying to get you to understand where I'm coming from. I actually accept that you don't understand where I'm coming from now. You can say that out loud. Sometimes you can't, But these are some of the new inner talk phrases, Anchoring thoughts, I call them that you might, You might want to start cultivating within yourself because that's where your power is. And as you teach yourself these new anchoring thoughts, Something miraculous happens below the veil of consciousness. So long as you really feel it, Nothing shifts inside of you unless there's a feeling shift because the subconscious mind, You have to feel the change in order to create enough neurological and chemical change or biological and physiological change in order for neuroplasticity to actually take place. There has to be a feeling change. But this is profound if you're able to understand it, If you're able to appreciate it and you don't poo poo it right away. I've had many clients who are like, No, This just doesn't feel right. It feels like injustice. And I say, Okay, I get it. And there's going to come a time when you realize that a narcissist is a steel wall. They live off of the energy that you're expending, Trying to get them. It's never going to work. And so I hope that this session has been helpful and I hope that it motivates you to consider the power of silence when it comes to a narcissist because you want to remember that their power is in getting you to talk. Now what happens when you talk, You reveal and when you reveal the narcissist knows where you are, Where healthy people reveal. So I want to have the kids next weekend and I'm hoping that because I have something to do next weekend, I hope hoping that we can switch and, And you know, You can have the kids in the following weekend. That's the worst thing you could say to a narcissist because the minute a narcissist knows what you want, They're going to react to that and they're going to, They're going to want what you want. And so just getting a little bit strategic about understanding how a narcissist thinks, What their agenda is when they lock and load on somebody. And if you are their source of narcissistic supply, Then their goal is to dominate you. Their goal is to outrun you and to suck you dry of emotions. So you want to get strategic when it comes to a narcissist. And so no, I do not think it is healthy to engage. If you think that by engaging with a narcissist and keeping this relationship going, That you think that's healthy. I don't think that that's healthy. I think what's healthy is learning to disengage, To discern, And to move beyond needing to engage with somebody who's built to not hear you. If you are codependent, Keep at loving yourself and healing that inner child and understanding that codependency is neurological. It's rooted in the subconscious mind. I've been saying this for over 20 years now. I'm so grateful that people are finally getting, Getting on board. They're finally saying what I've been saying for 20 years, That this has to do with survival patterns. That's what this is about. You are not weak. You do not need people too much. You grew up in a home that demanded you abandon the self in order to survive. And that's not your fault.

Reviews

thanks, Lisa ♥️🌹🥰🌹♥️

👏👏👏 I have been working on non-reactive responses including silence and simple agreement. I’ve conceptually known for a long time, “if you’re truly comfortable with your stance in something, there’s not much need to defend it.” Getting “there” after being triggered has been one of the hardest parts of the journey. Currently caring for elderly narcissistic parent after being away for 30 years. Nothing like coming home to the petri dish of your dysfunction 😆

But when you are able to stop and think, and see the result it renders, it can be rewarding and reinforcing.